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BONDSTOCK COMMITTEE
BONDSTOCK IS COMING! As Bondstock is quickly approaching, make sure you don’t miss your getting your tickets for the best week of the Bond year. The committee has spent long months behind the scenes to bring you the greatest Bondstock yet, in celebration of Bond’s 25th Anniversary. Bondstock is the pinnacle festival of the Bond University calendar. It features a variety of festivities celebrating all aspects of Bond University life including cultural, recreational, academic and sporting achievements. This year, Bondstock will cater to an approximate audience of up to 5,000 participants throughout the week including students, staff, alumni and their families as well as VIP guests. In previous years, VIP guests have included Sir Richard Branson, John Howard and Alan Bond as well as musical artists such as VanShe and Ruby Rose. With over twenty events and activities held throughout the week, there is no doubt that there is an opportunity for everyone to be part of the celebration. So don’t forget to like the page: www.facebook.com/Bondstock2014 Stay tuned for our upcoming Website, Instagram and Snapchat launch.
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xoxo your Bondstock Committee
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Lord of the Solomons
W
hen packing for a trip, you have to prioritize. I’ve told myself this for nineteen years and yet, the night before my departure to the Solomon Islands, I was still without a valid passport, with a suitcase stuffed with Tim-Tams, the entire works of Hemingway and a curling iron. The curling iron, I rationalise, is multi-purposed. It can also be used as a twirling baton or a weapon. Leaving for the third world can seriously change your mindset. This is starkly realized when you are working in a hospital where open surgery is conducted using local anaesthetic Return flight from Makira to Honiara and where babies are born and die every day due to lack of medical facilities. Travelling to the Solomon Islands for the Iumi Tugeda Solomon Islands Committee was an invaluable experience, especially in light of the recent 7.6 magnitude earthquake and flash floods which killed 16 and left more than 9000 homeless. In the capital, Honiara, dust and an nescapable humidity permeates every crevice of your body. Climbing into an air-conditioned taxi is a welcomed relief. The DHC-6-300 with its 10 seats and rickety little engine which coughs and splutters over the ocean. Two valium later and I’m on top of the
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by Penelope Meeves
world, literally. My poor companion, who seems to struggle a little with heights, frantically grabs for my hand. “Now, now,” I soothe. She begins to pray. She’s closer to God then she’ll ever be. Her concerns are somehow validated Solomon Island Aid Trippers (from left): Marty when we see the Campbell, Sarah Smith, Penelope Meeves, Brooke Mallard, Ashika Amin, Ricky Fuoo. runway, which is in fact, not a runway at all. It’s more a grassy plain. The town ambulance comes to collect us. And surprise, surprise - it’s an old ute with standing room only. Alas, I’ve finally found a paradise which has not been levelled into an ugly urban sprawl, complete with golf course and tiki bar. Makira islands are fringed by palms and plantations of cocoa, bananas, pawpaw, carambola, ngali nuts and drooping coconuts. Barefoot island children run up the shoreline, horizon bouncing around their heads. Don’t be deceived by its tranquillity, Kira Kira is a place where people work and toil, live and die too young. The local hospital is sadly dilapidated, with stray cats running in and out of the nurse’s ward. I walk up and down the aisles of beds, reading each prognosis. Hepatitis C, Elephantitis, Cerebral Malaria… The patient’s outlook is bleak when
it’s a struggle to source simple antibiotics. In the post-natal ward, a tiny infant is wrapped in flimsy fabric which does little to conceal her popping veins and swollen stomach. The child is severely premature. In the West, this child would be placed in an incubator, within a neonatal intensive care unit with 24 hour care. The soft cry had ceased within a few days. She had begun her life with an early ending.
wiped out most of their crop harvest. More problematic was the absence of any incentive and a general apathy towards the upkeep of infrastructure. This is only exacerbated when beer is cheaper than fresh bottled water. The logic: alcohol is the anaesthesia by which they endure the operation of life and besides, water rusts the pipes.
Teaching the kids at the local primary school One of the areas devastated by flooding in sex education in a the capital Honiara. The locals are different language is an somewhat laissez faire when it comes interesting experience. They burst to life and death. It’s a refreshing into hysterics every few minutes. change from our obsession with Thankfully, the teacher takes over mortality. The insularity of island life for science. “We’re doing geology,” became apparent when we wandered she says, “It’s a bit too hard for you down to the markets. The locals to teach.” Fair call. So I take a seat didn’t even try to hide their laughter. at the back where I can watch the Though, who could blame them… we magic happen. Expecting to learn a were a clan of strange white people little about igneous, sedimentary and and wedged between us, was Marty metamorphic rocks, I can’t help but who was so sunburnt he looked laugh when the teacher raises a stone more like Patrick the Starfish. An above her head and asks, “what is old man leant against the thin trunk this?” In unison, the children cry, “a of a palm, engulfed by the thick pall brown rock.” Tricky stuff. of a handrolled cigarette. Exhaling slowly, he puffed smoke rings from I slowly drift into a trance as I gaze cracked lips. The ground was stained outside. The lorikeets fall silent from red with betelnut, a symbol of the the palms. The clouds hang sullen in island malaise. A couple glanced at the sky and suddenly, a gush of wind each other, in a moment of reflection, forces its way through the timber the depth of field minimal, and their joinery. Then the world shakes on its foreignness like two axis, for just a few moments. It might pages of a closed have been the children jumping, book. causing the foundations to shake. Only, we were resting on a slab of Life is a struggle for concrete. the islanders, after a bout of severe It was undeniably the wrath of Poseidon which had caused the Giggles all ‘round in the local primary school. flooding which had
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window frames to shudder. The kids sat immediately. Upon reflection, it’s really wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. The Solomon Islands rest on a fault line and they experience many minor quakes.
this realisation. Somehow we have forgotten how to live in the moment. This is the moment, as your eyes scan the page. Take a moment to feel the creases of the paper under your fingertips, the feeling of your spine resting against the back On Sunday, we sailed of your chair. Ignore the out to a remote island. beeping of your iPhone Fun with the kids during lunch break. We loaded the tinny and remember that with crates of SolBrew paradise isn’t just in the and crusty tuna sandwiches. Two Solomon Islands, where the Redlocals laughed as we piled in, breasted pygmy parrot winks through waddling along in layers to protect your bedroom window. Paradise us from the sun, with inflatable lilos exists when the sun is cut in half by trailing behind us. We travelled for the horizon, sending rays peeking over an hour, with miles of white over Lake Orr. Paradise exists when horses stretching out in front of us. you spend each day passing under Midway, a rumbling storm front rolled the largest freestanding, sandstone over. Uncanopied and exposed to arch in the Southern hemisphere. the elements, we squinted as the Paradise exists when you live in rain blinded us. A distant thunder a first world country and have clap woke us from our stupor, whiteaccess to tertiary education, clean hot and remote. The water and sanitation. engine shuddered, Sometimes, Eckhart as the tide steered Tolle’s philosophy of our course, the island ‘Living in the Now’ pulling us with its seems unobtainable whimsical force. We as we are constantly immediately sank our competing in the race toes into the white for self-advancement. sand, observing the This drive without Island Daytrip scattering of trees on a destination has shell-paved floor. The spawned an sun peaked through the cloud cover, identity crisis where there is little nestling into the celestial sphere. understanding of who we are as we are continuously in the pursuit It’s an interesting thing, escapism. of who we could be. A quick trip Although paradise is only a short to the Solomon Islands helps put flight away, you can traverse far and everything in perspective, providing wide and never escape your own life. the firmament of self-actualisation. It was as though the axis on which Everyone needs a dose of the islands. the world revolved rested purely on
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Photographers: Kari Grace | James Burns Events: BSA’s Palaver
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Schmoozing…A Students Guide To Networking! Practical hints and
tips on networking successfully, how to prepare for events and keep track of your professional networks.
Tuesday 3rd June 1:00pm-2:00pm & Thursday 5th June 12:00pm-1:00pm CDC Seminar Room (9_1_07)
CAREERS MASTER CLASS Making the most of your post-graduate studies! Strategies to elevate your position within your chosen industry. How to sell your high level of knowledge and skills and perfect your sales pitch.
Tuesday 3rd June 12:00pm-1:00pm & Thursday 5th June 1:00pm-2:00pm 14 | scope
CDC Seminar Room (9_1_07)
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scope ŠBUSA 2014
issue 21
Would you like to contribute to Scope Magazine? Send your articles and ideas to James Jeffree at publications.busa@bond.edu.au
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